Honesty isn’t always best policy, ask Paul

AS Alex Sanderson went one way, striding through the Sale gates as their new director of rugby, Paul Gustard, his opposite number at Harlequins, was heading for the exit at The Stoop. While Sanderson was ushering in a brave new dawn at Sale this week, Gustard was being shown the door by the Harlequins suits after just two seasons, in which the club finished fifth and sixth in the Premiership table.

The poignancy of careers travelling in the opposite directions was brought home by a video of Sanderson delivered a rousing maiden speech to his squad on the training pitch at Carrington Lane.

Sanderson, who made his name as a flanker at Sale, winning five England caps before being forced to retire at 27 by a back injury, told his squad, “I have just come home,” before outlining his core values.

Sanderson said: “It’s about honesty. I value honesty in all our communications, and I know honesty takes trust, and trust takes time – but we’ve got time, so we will get there. Hard work. I am not a workaholic. You do not have to worry about that – I have my beach holidays – but I know everything we can achieve here, everything great and lasting, is going to take hard work.”

The Twitter clip was viewed more than 30,000 times, and got an overwhelming thumbs-up from Sale fans.

At the same time, the rumours doing the rounds at Harlequins suggested that Gustard’s departure ‘by mutual consent’ had been prompted by players tired of his insistence that his squad had to become more organised and better disciplined.

It does not take much of a leap of imagination to see that Gustard’s parting shot to the Quins squad would have been of a very different tenor to Sanderson’s rallying cry.

This tale of two promising English coaches, who are in their early 40s, and were colleagues at Saracens after both joined the coaching staff in 2008, is in many ways a parable of the modern pro game. It is a reflection, in particular, of the onset of a football style hire-and-fire culture in which player power is an increasingly influential factor in how coaches fare.

Everything appeared rosy for Gustard when he joined England as Eddie Jones’ defence coach in early 2016. By that time he had earned plaudits for developing the ‘Wolf-pack’ defensive system that had helped Saracens to win three Premiership titles.

Sanderson, meanwhile, hunkered down as forwards/defence coach alongside Mark McCall at Saracens, going on to help them win their three European Cup titles in 2016, 2017, and 2019, as well as two more Premiership titles.

Throughout his time at Saracens, Sanderson was always an impressive communicator. What is also interesting is that when Gustard was at Saracens he would talk animatedly about his defensive role.

He explained how he tried to engage and inspire the players by bringing wild wolves and pythons – although he credited the idea to Sanderson – into the Saracens training ground. He even tried fire-walking to illustrate the importance of mind over matter in defence.

Gustard’s innovative methods were also evident after England followed up their 2016 Six Nations Grand Slam by going to Australia and securing a three-nil series whitewash over the Wallabies. After an epic defensive effort in the second Test in Melbourne secured a 23-7 series-clinching victory, it emerged that England had made a phenomenal 200 tackles to Australia’s 58.

Jones hailed it as a “rope-a-dope” masterclass, and afterwards Gustard spoke to the media about what he had said to the England players before the match.

He said: “I told them I had lots of opportunities in life, off the field, on the field, and I wasted most of them. I would look at other people for the blame. I thought I trained hard and worked hard, but I didn’t.

“This is their opportunity to make history, to do something different, to be special, and if they look at themselves at the end of the day, can they say they emptied themselves. I think today they did. We showed the real character of the team – the real character of the individuals.”

Gustard revealed he had emphasised the importance of honesty and selfaccountability before the match by reading them the Dale Wimbrow poem, The Man In The Glass. It was an intriguing insight into the motivational tools used in the modern game.

By the time England were on tour in South Africa two years later, and their fortunes had dipped, Gustard was less accessible, and soon after he joined Harlequins in 2018 the barriers in com- munication with the media went up.

It looked as if he was carrying the weight of the world in trying to keep Harlequins in the top half of the Premiership table, and although he succeeded in doing so, Gustard’s frustration at times was obvious.

He let it show when Joe Marler was yellow-carded in a 48-10 mauling by Sale after elbowing Jean-Luc Du Preez in the face. Gustard said, “I’m sure Joe will look at himself – it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

This season the signs of player unrest at The Stoop were signalled when the transfer rumour-mill linked club stalwart Mike Brown to Sale, and Marler, Danny Care, and fly-half Marcus Smith, were also said to be looking at offers from other clubs.

Further signs that Gustard had ‘lost the dressing room’ came with five losses in a row, and then the squandering of a 12-point lead at home, resulting in a draw with London Irish in the last round of the Premiership. Then came the parting of the ways.

Sanderson and Gustard have built their reputations as coaches by trying to instil the values of hard work and honesty. Whether those values are held so dear in the corridors of power at some Premiership clubs is questionable.

“Gustard even tried fire-walking to illustrate the importance of mind over matter”